W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

He went into the foyer, where the mystery of his missing mother and her husband was solved. There was a brochure on the table. Three Days and Three Nights, Including New Year’s Eve, at the Luxurious Beach Hotel, Asbury Park, N.J. Only $99.95 (Double Occupancy).

That’s where they were, not thirty miles from Lakehurst.

Christ, didn’t they know there was a war on? That the Japs had taken Wake Island two days before Christmas? That the Japs had invaded the Philippine Islands? That while they were sipping their fucking Seven-and-Seven in the Beach Hotel, there were German submarines right offshore, waiting to put torpedoes into American ships?

(Three)

121 Park Avenue

East Orange, New Jersey

2105 Hours 1 January 1942

What I’ll do,thought PFC Stephen Koffler, USMC, is get together with the guys, maybe get a couple of drinks.

He went to the telephone mounted on the wall in the kitchen and dialed from memory the number of his best buddy.

Mrs. Danielli told him Vinny was out someplace, she didn’t know where. She would tell him Steve had called, she said, and asked him to wish his mom and dad a happy New Year.

He started to call Toddy Feller, but remembered that his mother had written that Toddy had enlisted in the Navy right after Pearl Harbor Day.

He thought, unkindly, that at this very moment Toddy was probably on his hands and knees, his fat ass in the air, scrubbing a deck at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center with a toothbrush.

He went back into his bedroom, where he now remembered seeing the package from Parris Island, unopened, on the closet shelf. He took it down, tore the paper off, and dug through it. There was dirty underwear and dirty socks, and the pants and shirt and shoes and toilet kit (a brand-new one) he’d taken to the post office when he’d enlisted.

And his keys. To the lobby door, to the mailbox in the lobby, to the apartment door, and to his locker in East Orange High School. He’d kept that one for a souvenir, even though it meant paying the bastards two-fifty for a key you could have made in Woolworth’s Five and Ten for a quarter.

He put the keys in his pocket and went out the front door and down the stairs to the Marshall apartment, on the floor below.

He heard conversation inside when the doorbell sounded, and then he heard someone who was probably Bernice say, "I wonder who that can be?" and then the door was opened.

Mr. Marshall looked at him a minute without recognition, until Steve spoke.

"Hello, Mr. Marshall, is Bernice around?"

"I’ll be damned!" Mr. Marshall said. "I didn’t recognize you. Hazel, you’ll never guess who it is!"

"So tell me," Mrs. Hazel Marshall said.

"Come on in," Mr. Marshall said, taking Steve’s arm, then putting his arm around his shoulder, as he led him into the living room.

"Recognize this United States Marine, anybody?" Mr. Marshall said.

"Why, my God, it’s Stevie," Mrs. Marshall said. "Stevie, your mother and father are in Asbury Park!"

"Yeah, I know."

"Oh, she’ll be heartbroken she missed you!" Mrs. Marshall said as she came to him and kissed him. Then she held him by both arms and looked at him intently. "You’ve changed."

"Hello, Stevie," Dianne Marshall said. "Remember me?"

"Yeah, sure. Hello, Dianne."

"And this is Leonard," Mrs. Marshall said. "Leonard Walters. He and Dianne are sort of keeping company."

Leonard Walters looked like a candy-ass, Steve decided. Dianne looked good. She didn’t have big boobs like Bernice, but the ones she had pressed attractively against her sweater.

"I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m sure," Leonard said as he shook Steve’s hand. "You’re a Marine, huh?"

"That’s right."

"How about a little something against the cold, Steve?" Mr. Marshall said.

"Charlie, he’s only seventeen."

"Eighteen," Steve corrected her. "I was hoping Bernice would be home."

"She had a date," Dianne said. "She’ll be sorry she missed you."

"No big deal," Steve said.

"Seven-and-Seven OK, Steve?"

Seven-and-Seven was Seagram’s Seven Crown Blended Whiskey and 7-Up. Steve hated it.

"No, thank you," Steve said.

"See, I told you," Mrs. Marshall said.

"How about a little Scotch, then? That’s what I’m having."

"Scotch would be fine," Steve said. He wasn’t even sure what it was, only that he had never had any before.

"Water or soda?"

"Soda, please."

Dianne walked across the room to him.

"What are those things on your uniform, medals?"

"Marksmanship medals."

She stood close to him and bent over and examined them carefully. He could see her scalp where she parted her hair; and he could smell her; and he could see the outline of her brassiere strap.

"I’m impressed," she said, straightening, still so close he could feel the warmth of her breath and smell the Sen-Sen she had been chewing.

Mr. Marshall handed him a glass and Steve took a sip. It tasted like medicine.

"That’s all right, son?"

"Just fine," Steve said.

Dianne walked away. He could see her rear end quiver; she was wearing calf-high boots. Steve thought that calf-high boots were highly erotic, ranking right up there with pictures he had seen in The Police Gazette in the barbershop, of women in brassieres and underpants and garter belts.

"So how do you like it in the Marines, Steve?" Mr. Marshall asked.

"I like it fine," Steve said. That wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but he understood that he couldn’t say anything else.

"What have they got you doing?"

"Monday I start parachute school," Steve said.

"I don’t know what that means," Mr. Marshall said.

"The Corps is organizing parachute battalions," Steve explained. "I volunteered for it."

"You mean you’ll be jumping out of airplanes?" Mrs. Marshall asked.

"Yes, Ma’am."

"Really?" Dianne asked. When he looked at her and nodded, she added, "I’ll be damned."

"Dianne!" her mother said. "Try to remember you’re a lady."

Steve sensed that Leonard wished he would leave, and while Steve thought Leonard was a candy-ass, fair was fair. If he had a date with some girl, he’d want to get her alone and away from her family and neighbors, too.

He refused Mr. Marshall’s offer to freshen his drink, and then left.

He called the Danielli house again, thinking that maybe Vinny had come back; but Mrs. Danielli said she hadn’t heard from him and didn’t expect to, as late as it was. He apologized for calling so late and turned the radio on.

He quickly grew bored with that. From his living room window he could see the candy store on the corner of Eighteenth Street and Park Avenue but it was closed. So there was no place he could go without a car.

He had a damned good idea where Vinny was. He was up at The Lodge, on the mountain in West Orange, where you could get a drink even if you weren’t twenty-one. But getting one around here was an impossibility. They all knew who you were and how old you were. And you needed a car to get to The Lodge.

But then he remembered hearing that if you were in uniform you could get a drink, period. The idea began to grow on him. There was a bar by the Ampere station. His mother and her husband never went there, so the people there wouldn’t connect him with them.

It was worth a try. It was a shame to waste a seventy-two-hour pass sitting around listening to the radio all by yourself. If they wouldn’t serve him, he’d just leave. He’d turn red in the face, too; but that wouldn’t be too bad.

He put on his overcoat and his brimmed cap, turned the overcoat collar up against the cold wind, and walked to the bar by the Ampere station.

It was crowded and noisy. He pushed his cap back on his head, unbuttoned his overcoat, and found an empty seat at the bar.